


Shrike

by unhappy_matt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - No Monsters, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Body Horror, Case Fic, Death, Flashbacks, Horror, Incest Undertones, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Nightmares, Stalking, Trauma, Violence, Weechesters, unreliable narrators, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28957791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappy_matt/pseuds/unhappy_matt
Summary: Dean Winchester was raised to go after cold cases, bringing closure to unsolved deaths and disappearances.When the country is shaken by a string of brutal murders involving young men, Dean is determined to track down the killer known as the Shrike.Meanwhile, his estranged brother Sam is missing.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 42
Kudos: 22





	1. Old dirt road

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: in order to preserve a component of surprise and tension, I kept the warnings general and vague. I will be adding more spoiler-y warnings in the end notes of each chapter as needed. 
> 
> Any resemblance with real names or places is unintentional; I don't mean to copy any real life event involving real people. 
> 
> This is my first attempt at something more horror-oriented and investigative. I'm very excited. ^^

Golden sunlight shimmering through green leaves. Sunbeams slipping through the palm of his hand covering his face. The humming of cicadas and the whispers of the river a few feet away, beyond the low bushes.

Warm fingers splayed across his cheek. A hand digging into his shoulder, shaking him.

_“Dean, wake up. Wake up! It’s Sunday.”_

It was a dream, some part of his mind knew. It had happened—a lifetime ago—but it was a memory. Long gone, now.

He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. The clearing in the woods dissolved, turning to bluish darkness.

_“Dean.”_

A different sound, now. Rhythmic, repetitive.

_“Dean. Open the door.”_

Nails scraping on wood.

_“I wanna talk to you, open this door!”_

Bang, bang, bang. Deafening blows raining down, drilling through his skull. A flash of an image, more felt than seen: the too-tense skin on a drum.

_“Please open the door!”_

He came to with a gasp, sitting upright. He rubbed his eyes, blinking through the gray shadows as the shapes of the room around him became recognizable again, little by little.

The small closet, painted a light baby blue, against the opposite wall. The small round table. There was a bowl on top of it, filled with dried flowers that spread a faint, sweet scent. Above the table, a corner of the rectangular mirror glittered like a knife.

He turned to his left, with a taste of sand in his mouth and a pounding ache eating at the back of his head. The door of his hotel room came into focus, white in the semidarkness. The noises had stopped. A moment later, a woman’s voice came through the wooden panel:

“Sir? Is anyone there? It’s the cleaning service.”

He fell back on the mattress with groan, sinking into the thin, flattened pillow.

“’m here,” he mumbled.

“I tried knocking before… You didn’t hear me,” the voice outside continued. “I need to ask you to vacate the room for an hour, sir.”

_Cleaning service._ Of course. The places he usually crashed at while working a job had nothing quite so nice, most of the time. This hotel was nothing fancy, really; but he had a bit of extra cash on the side that month, and fuck it, he could use some rest in a place that smelled nice and had a view that wasn’t just another piss-stained dead-end alleyway.

He patted around the mattress. The tangle of sheets around his legs produced his belt, the empty paper wrap of a burger, and finally his phone. He flipped it open, grimacing. 11:13 AM.

“Okay,” he rasped. Shards of glass in his throat. “Okay, just—give me a sec.” He slammed his phone on the night stand and closed his eyes. The momentary darkness helped to calm the pulsing in his temples, but not by much.

Propping himself up on his elbow, he kicked off the sheets and pushed his legs off the mattress. His bare feet touched the cool wooden tiles. A place without a dirty, dusty carpet, for a change.

He picked up his jeans from where they laid in a crumpled dump near the corner of the bed.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he reiterated to the maid, now that his voice was starting to function decently again.

Standing up slowly in the stuffy August air, Dean Winchester squinted at the sun that peeked through the blinds.

He scratched the back of his neck, fingertips scraping sweat-matted hair. Water, he needed some water.

-

By the time he made it out of the quiet hotel lobby and into the small parking space outside, he was slightly steadier on his feet. After washing his face and brushing his teeth and throwing on the last clean t-shirt, he was at least starting to feel like a person again.

The world was still spinning and fading around the edges of his vision, blurring in the summer haze. The heat on his nape was scorching; sweat started rippling down his spine, almost immediately, pooling under his armpits. Chalky dust from the too-white gravel of the parking lot clung to his shoes.

He’d forgotten his sunglasses. Dean turned around, glancing at the front of the hotel. It was a small two-storey building, with the name in faded sky blue letters on white paint, matching the washed out blue of the rows of wooden shutters. The hotel stood near a crossroad, at the meeting point between four thin strips of sun-baked asphalt that nearly disappeared in a sea of overgrown, yellowed grass.

The neon sign with the name _Honeymoon Hotel_ was off. In the late morning it rose like a thin, white blade against the clear sky. When he’d arrived three days before, after dark, a few of the letters weren’t working.

Sweat gathered at Dean’s hairline. His car was where he’d left it, shining jet black under the light, taking up most of the small parking lot. Well, no one had complained so far. He paused, but he didn’t take it. Instead, after a moment, he kept walking, headed down the stretch of road that lead downtown.

-

The bartender—Dorothy, he’d learned from her name tag—barely glanced up when he made his way through the entrance of the pub. Dean nodded at the few other customers. There were two middle aged-looking men sitting on the tall stools at the bar, and an older guy sipping coffee at one of the tables near the door.

The _Lenny’s_ was comprised of one small, square hall. Rough wood beams and a low ceiling made the place look more like a wine cellar than a bar. The walls inside were covered in a dark blue wallpaper that had peeled off in various spots, peeking through masses of yellowed photos and posters, the curling corners amassed against each other.

Everything inside looked like it was perennially coated in a thick layer of dust—the metal counter, the leather seats, the wooden tables. It smelled like it, too, sickeningly sweet and persistent, gripping Dean’s nose and his throat.

There were no windows inside, the only light source coming from the door and from a line of yellowish lamps on the ceiling. It was like walking into a different climate; it offered some relief from the heat outside, but the air was still, humid, clinging to his body like a wet blanket. The place had been nearly empty on Dean’s first morning there, and it didn’t look any different that day.

Dean flashed a quick smile as he pulled out his wallet. “Morning, Dorothy.”

The bartender looked up briefly from the plate of pancakes she was covering in syrup. “What can I get you?”

She had short, metal-gray hair coiling in tight curls, and sleeves of colorful ink work running up from her wrists to her broad shoulders. He caught a glimpse of the words _’98 Marathon_ on the back of her white tank top.

After glancing at the blackboard behind her for a moment, Dean shook his head. “One beer. Medium. And a large plate of bacon and eggs.”

Dorothy nodded curtly before turning around. “Coming right up,” she said, her voice a hoarse monotone.

She didn’t look surprised to see him again, not after he’d spent the last two nights in a row there. The bar was the only place to go, pretty much; not much to do around here, it seemed, except passing by and leaving. Certainly many people, especially the younger generations, seemed to have done exactly that. What was left was a small agglomerate of houses scattered around a town center that had a church, a post office, a couple bars. A depressing Main Street lined with neatly trimmed trees offered the sight of rows of shop windows, several of them failing or abandoned. Beyond that, the empty quiet of fields that stretched for miles and miles, all around the highway that passed nearby.

Dean grabbed his order and found a seat in a remote corner. He sat down facing the entrance, and slumped against the backrest. The padded leather cushion smelled strongly of stale smoke.

The first sip, at least, was heavenly. It was draft beer, sharply cold like spring water. He downed half his glass, then took a forkful off eggs and bacon, chewing through it while he glanced at his phone again. The food was dry and not salty enough, and eating wasn’t the most appetizing idea, with the work he had to do—but he needed the fuel. 

His thumb hovered over the keypad; a new wave of restlessness travelled through him, shooting down his calf with the bouncing of his leg.

No new messages. No calls. The empty display was exactly what he expected, and it felt mocking.

An old TV croaked and buzzed in the corner above him, tuned in on a local news channel. Dean set down his fork and pushed his plate aside to pull out a pen and a folded piece of paper he’d shoved in his pocket.

What had brought him to that particular Nowhere, USA was a job—it was always a job.

He downed half his beer and ate some more as he went through the list of names and places he had written down. It hadn’t helped up to that point, really; there wasn’t a pattern he could find, nothing that suggested something _predictable_.

Trying again couldn’t hurt. A new day, a fresher perspective on things, maybe. Surely his mind felt anything but refreshed, in that damp, dusty heat.

On the TV screen the reporter, a young red-haired woman, was droning on about the weather. A heat wave was expected over the next few days; no shit. Dean rubbed his thumb over his mouth, tapping the pencil on the paper.

What had brought him there was a missing person case. A missing young man: Matt Williams, age twenty-four. He hadn’t come home from work one night, three weeks prior, and no one had seen him or heard from him since. As if he had _vanished into thin air_ , which was never true, of course, but it was the kind of thing people said when they couldn’t wrap their minds around something.

Williams could have been an isolated case, a local tragedy like countless others. Except that he happened to fit a profile—for another case entirely.

His temples were starting to pulse again. Dean stood up, flagging Dorothy to ask for a cup of coffee. One of the men at the bar was leaving; Dean eyed the newspaper he had left on the counter.

“Hey, mind if I take a look?”

The other customer barely made eye contact, fishing out a few crumpled up one dollar bills. “All yours.”

Back to his seat with his fuming cup, Dean spread out the newspaper over the sticky wooden table. It was a local newspaper, the previous week’s issue. A title caught his eye:

**_ALLEGED SHRIKE SIGHTING TERRORIZES HOUSE PARTY_ **

Dean grimaced at the word choice. _The Shrike_ was a cheesy nickname some news source or another had come up with first, and soon others had followed, until it had turned into the unofficial moniker for the person behind a series of brutal murders across the country. The first victim had made the news two years before; six more had followed.

He took another bite of his lukewarm food, even though his throat had suddenly closed up, resisting the act of swallowing. There it was, the missing piece of a puzzle that he couldn’t solve.

The Shrike targeted men. Men in their twenties, whose bodies had been found mutilated and abandoned in secluded areas. The killer had never been identified, and was presumed to be at large and active.

Matt Williams wasn’t one of the Shrike’s victims, officially—his body hadn’t been found.

He kept reading through the article. Despite the sensationalistic tone, the alarm had resolved in a whole bunch of nothing. Some teens had been having a party at someone’s countryside house, in a nearby town. They had called the police, in a panic, when two of the guys had wandered off in the fields. The kids had been found, after a few hours, drunk but very much alive, and had eventually admitted to wanting to play a prank on their friends.

Dean lifted his eyes from the paper, glancing around the deserted bar.

Many missing person cases were being attributed to the same hand that had killed those seven men. Dean’s research into Matt Williams’ case had turned up something; there had been four other disappearances that matched the profile of the Shrike’s victims. Men in their twenties who had gone missing from somewhere isolated while they were alone, over the last six months. No bodies had been found; no traces, no requests for ransom. They didn’t seem to know each other. They came from different towns from in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas.

He couldn’t be certain that it was the same killer; but Matt Williams’ vanishing had brought him there, and this was a lead he was going to follow.

He finished his coffee and he stood up again.

Now that he’d been testing the waters for a while, it was time to start asking questions. He needed to find the people who had been close to Williams.

His first impression of the lovely local community had been about as welcoming as he would’ve expected. He couldn’t blame them if they didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect of having the spotlight on their already struggling town—not with a potential connection to a case of national relevance.

It wasn’t going to be easy. It rarely ever was, but he had to give it a try. Prod around and see what he could find.

It was what he did, after all. The family business his father had raised him into, imprinted onto him since he was a kid.

It was the work that brought him across county lines, state to state, sleeping on motel beds and borrowed couches and in moldy apartments and inside his car. Wearing fake names and fake identities. Talking to people even when they wanted to punch him or shoot him. Listening and watching.

He went after unsolved cases. Missing people. Deaths in unclear circumstances. He followed the trails that had gone cold, and the ones that had been abandoned or buried because someone deemed them too unimportant, or too dangerous.

Maybe the missing men and the victims were unrelated. But if it wasn’t a coincidence—then the Shrike must have been there. Recently.

Two years.

After two years, maybe he was getting close.

-

“There you go… that’ll be 34.99.”

He nodded, taking his plastic bags from the cashier. He handed her the money and waited for his change as he glanced through the window of the convenience store. The sunset sky was streaked with red and violet.

He pocketed his change and lingered near the entrance for a moment, letting his eyes glide idly over the sunglasses stand, the bracelets, the key rings and lighters.

Someone brushed against his shoulder. A thump; a paper bag falling onto the floor, an orange and a tin can spilling out and rolling slowly across the floor near his shoes.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking…”

He leaned down to stop the fugitive items. Looking up, his eyes met a young woman in a light pink sundress. She had a pale, heart-shaped face; light brown hair pulled back in a braid.

Julie stood up, taking her groceries from the man who was looking at her. He was impressively tall; it was the first thing that stood out. His bare forearms were tan, contrasting with a white button-down shirt.

He handed her the fallen items. “Looks like it ripped,” he added, picking up the bag. His brown hair was long, brushing his shoulders. He smiled. “Need help carrying it?”

Julie hesitated. Her expression softened, relaxing into a smile, and she nodded.

“… Yes. Thank you, that would be so kind.”

-

The street lights were on when he found himself alone on the sidewalk, after escorting the girl to her car. There were people here and there, walking down the avenue in pairs or in small groups; families with small children, older kids with skateboards and rollers, couples with their arms around each other’s waist.

Sam inhaled deeply, breathing in the warm, dry air of the evening. The temperature was just barely starting to cool down enough to be bearable. He couldn’t wait to shower. Maybe he could take another walk lately, after dinner, and hit one of the bars.

He looked up at the darkening sky. Somewhere behind him, there were children squealing and giggling as they played.

He bit back a smile. It was nice, there. Quiet.

With his bags swaying gently by his sides, he headed back to his car, making his way slowly down the avenue.


	2. Blood moon rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see the end notes for more extensive content warnings!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the songs mentioned in this fic, which belong to their respective artists and productions. 
> 
> So excited for this chapter! <3

He had been dreaming of Sam.

Dean opened his eyes. The darkness around him was dense, pitch-black. He breathed slowly and found his own body limb after limb, each extremity first, from the tips of his fingers and toes, coming back up to his core, to his beating heart.

The images were fading already, but something lingered, a heftiness that was nearly tangible, physical. Something about Sammy—sunlight hitting hazel eyes—and the smell of burning flesh.

His left leg was hanging from the mattress, his foot brushing against the floor. His right arm was bent near his head at an uncomfortable angle. His body felt heavy and battered, glued to the mattress—like the splattered remains of a jumper on a sidewalk after a ten-storey fall. His heartbeat pulsed, alive and violent, in the silence.

Dean pulled himself up. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, setting his teeth—but the urge to retch passed, leaving him curled up on himself, sweat cooling on his bare arms and legs.

His phone informed him that it was 5:09 AM. Stretching his arms, he dragged himself to the door window that opened on the narrow terrace, over the fields stretching out behind the building. He didn’t bother getting dressed, beyond his boxers and the t-shirt he’d been sleeping in for the last couple of days. He doubted ear corns would have something to object.

He stepped outside, barefoot on the smooth tiles. The cool morning air hit his face.

He leaned against the railing, taking in the sight of the vast, empty sky, still dark except for a few slivers of pink light. Dry wind whispered through the wheat, like teeth rattling.

Dean scratched at his throat, fighting the craving rising up his throat. _Little early for a drink, don’t you think. Even for you._

He’d found a contact, at least, but it was way too early for that appointment. He turned to glance at his bed through the open window. He knew without trying that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again.

His headache hadn’t faded, but it didn’t matter. He had work to do.

-

Dean sat down at his usual spot at _Lenny’s_ a little before 9, with fried eggs and pancakes and a pot of coffee.

There was a blonde woman sitting at the counter, sipping on her milkshake; an older guy in a corner was doing crosswords. No one bothered to look at Dean twice as he opened his notebook next to his cup.

He took a sip, the taste bitter and burned and scalding on his tongue. He skimmed through the pages, going back to the first newspaper clip from two years back.

Up to that point, seven men had been added to the list of victims officially attributed to the Shrike.

There didn’t seem to be a connection between any of them. They hadn’t known each other; they were from different towns and states, from different social circles and different walks in life.

They were white, ranging from their early to late twenties. Each of them had been found in secluded areas, far from home or from where they had been last seen. On roadsides, in fields, in the woods. They had been _placed_ there, but where they had been killed had remained nebulous. For each case, locations in the area where the body had been retrieved had been looked into as the potential sites of the murders themselves: warehouses, abandoned shacks and barns, condo buildings under construction. Some traces belonging to the victims had been found, but the killer had done a careful cleanup job.

Dean had travelled for months, tracking down the possible trajectories of the Shrike’s movements.

The first two victims had been hitchhikers; the third, a hiker on a mountain trail. The fourth and the fifth were two students from different colleges; one of them had vanished from campus, the other from a stretch of highway where his car had been found abandoned after an engine failure. The sixth victim, a John Doe, had remained unidentified, and was presumed to have been homeless or a runaway. The seventh victim had drifted off from the club where he was partying with a group of friends, and had never returned.

There was a recurring motif to each crime scenes. Predictably, some had been quick to say it was _ritual_ , Satanic, something to do with black masses and human sacrifices, ‘cause that was always in vogue. Dean didn’t believe it.

The mutilations were always the same in each case. The eyes were gouged out, the tongue cut off. Not post-mortem, either. There were other signs of torture that had been inflicted while the victims were alive; the Shrike liked to extract teeth and nails with pliers. In each case, the missing parts had not been retrieved.

All victims showed ligature marks. There were particles of various types of fibers; ropes, cuffs, sometimes gags, all traceable to a variety of shops and production companies scattered throughout multiple states.

The killer had been meticulous about not leaving identifiable traces—no prints, no bites, no saliva or semen. There were no traces of sexual abuse.

For all seven victims, the cause of death had been a combination of blood loss and shock from multiple injuries, many of them inflicted with something sharp. The first victim’s head had been bashed in, but the rest had had their throats cut. That final blow was probably the only mercy those poor bastards had been praying for, while they were already more dead than alive.

Music swam through the fog wrapped around his brain, and Dean straightened up, watching absently as the old man from before stood close to the old jukebox next to the counter. It was an old thing, coated in what at some point must have been a bright combination of red and yellow.

A light, clear male voice filled the room. Something about the melody was like a deep, gutting ache; it gripped Dean’s chest, and he found himself surprised at a feeling of recognition. _“Seal It With A Kiss”_ was the name of the song, sung by Bryan Hyland. Not the music his father liked, but his mother had loved that song, Dean had been told. When he was a child, watching the road curving endlessly from the windows of a car, he had thought it was named _“Goodbye for the summer”_. It had made more sense, then, in his mind; it was a song about saying goodbye. About a promise of seeing each other again, too, when the fall would come.

He rubbed his knuckles over his face, then forced himself to push down another mouthful of food. He needed to remain tethered, to keep his head in the present. He wasn’t doing a stellar job of it. He looked down, focusing on the words in front of him.

The targets had been adult men who were in pretty good health, not especially small or skinny or fragile.

The Shrike was likely a man—the ferocity suggested considerable strength, but there was a _method_ to it. The killer had to be someone who had knowledge about the use of different weapons, about inflicting pain and how to prolong it. Someone who had been _trained_ into it.

Drugs or alcohol had been found in some of the victims’ systems, but not in amounts compatible with being incapacitated. Ingestion had either occurred before they met the killer, or they had felt comfortable enough to be drinking around him. There were signs of blunt force trauma on the back of the head. That was probably how the Shrike had jumped the victims, from behind, so he could tie them down.

The young men hadn’t fought back; they hadn’t had the chance. Once the killer had them where he wanted them, it was already too late.

The Shrike’s targets had been _trusting_ him—until he’d taken them by surprise.

This was why _shrike_ had become the killer’s nickname. Deceptively soft and gentle, like the carnivorous bird.

Dean turned a page and took another large sip of coffee.

The first three murders had been sloppier in their execution, more brutal. The eyes and the mouth had been stabbed at viciously, over and over, the tongue ripped out, deep gashes all over the bodies.

Dean shivered, going through the notes he had taken about those initial cases. He’d seen two of those bodies. Nasty stuff, even with everything he’d encountered in his life on the road.

The killer had been _angrier_ , back then, but also more _hesitant_. Months had passed between each one of the first three murders; the frequency had been alarming from the get-go, but they were still distant enough from one another that it had taken a while for law enforcement and the press to establish an explicit connection.

Maybe the Shrike had been _warming up_. Easing into it, figuring out what he was capable of. And after a while, as he saw what he could keep getting away with, the killer had _refined_ his method. The last four victims had all turned up within the course of the that same year, weeks apart. The incisions had become more precise, more surgical, allowing the eyes and tongues to be removed while presumably intact.

Dean glanced at his half-finished breakfast. His hands were trembling, fingers splayed over the pages.

The Shrike was growing confident. More determined, too. More urgent. Those things he did, the same scene, again and again—it _was_ a _message_.

Who was the Shrike talking to?

“Uh… mister Landon?”

Dean lifted his eyes. A girl and a guy were standing near his table, a few steps away. The girl was white, petite, with long dark hair. She had a black t-shirt on, with what looked to be like the cover art for some mental band on the front. The guy was wearing a green shirt; he was black, with a shaved head and a pair of thick, square glasses with a red frame. They both looked a few years younger than him, maybe.

Dean nodded, gesturing toward the empty bench on the opposite side of his table.

“Alana and Mark, right? Please. Have a seat.” He cleared his throat, shutting his journal and pushing it to a side. “I’m Martin Landon.” It was one of the aliases he’d been using lately. Martin Landon, private investigator.

The other two exchanged a look. The girl’s gaze flicked from her companion to Dean, and Dean caught the way their hands almost touched, knuckles brushing, their fingers not quite intertwined.

He leaned back, trying to make himself as non-threatening as he could. Small town, small community, and maybe those two were dating, and they were friends with the kid who had disappeared. They’d been with Williams the day before he went missing. He could see why they seemed reluctant to speak, but they’d agreed to see him, and maybe that was a start.

Finally, Alana nodded, raising her chin and taking a step forward. “Thank you for meeting us,” she said, voice low and clipped. Mark slid closer to the wall and she sat by his side.

The young man leaned forward, tension in his shoulders. “Nobody else wants to listen,” he added, in the same hushed tone.

-

The silence in the hotel room was thrumming. The quiet was like a living thing, filled with little noises; it growled, scratching at the back of his mind. It was rarely comforting.

Dean shook his head as he pulled out the duffle bag he had shoved under the bed. Sitting down at the small round table, he spread out his notes. Maps, scribbled pages, copies of photos from crime scenes and autopsy reports. Everything he had put together over months of sleepless, caffeine-fueled nights and miles on the road from coast to coast. Then, breath caught in his throat, he retrieved something else from the bag. His father’s journal.

It felt heavy in his hands, and frail. Like a Bible. It was a notebook with a plain leather cover. The pages inside were yellowed, swollen with years of wear. Lines and lines of words intertwined and overlapped in a swirl of faded black and blue ink. The journal contained years of his father’s work. Notes about every case he’d worked, everything he had learned about the behavior of rapists, kidnappers, murderers.

_The work_ hadn’t started with the Shrike. It had started long before that, twenty-three years prior.

It had started with a fire, in the home where John and Mary Winchester lived with their two small children. Dean was four, then. His brother Sam was a baby.

In the years after, their father had drilled the story into their heads. An intruder had started the fire, as a distraction while they tried to get close to the room upstairs, where little Sam slept in his crib.

John and the children had made it out. Dean had been the one to carry his little brother out in the yard.

Mary had stayed behind. She’d tried to fight off the attacker, to catch him. When John had attempted to go back for her, she was injured, trapped under debris.

He hadn’t reached her in time. He had watch her burn.

The intruder had never been found.

Dean remembered the fire. The heat on his skin, his brother’s weight in his arms.

And he remembered how sometime later, their father had put him and Sam in his car, and the home they had known had disappeared inside the rearview mirror. Sammy was crying, and Dean was a kid, but with what little he could understand, he had _known_ —he had _felt_ it—that things would never go back to being the same again.

They had spent years moving from town to town, from state to state. Their father was—angry. Scary.

The investigation into their mother’s death had brought no results. Dean hadn’t understood all of that then, but he had learned later. Their father wanted justice. If he couldn’t get it any other way, he was going to create his own. He wanted to find the person who had caused his wife’s death by himself.

They had lived in the car and in motel rooms, or camping out in the woods; in empty warehouses, or crashing down on friends’ couches and beds. Wearing hand-me-downs, more often than not without knowing when their next meal would be.

 _“Yes, sir,”_ had been the words of Dean’s childhood, the recurring echo of his teenage years. John Winchester had been more of a drill sergeant than a dad, but Dean didn’t resent him. He’d done what he had to.

He’d taught him and Sam what he knew. They had learned all about weapons, about knives and guns and ropes. About human anatomy, and the countless ways in which a person could cause pain to another. The things people did to one another, and their reasons for doing so.

They had gone to school, when they could, but the most important lessons they had learned had little to do with chalk on a blackboard and lists of dates to learn by heart. Dean and Sam had grown up reading essays about serial killers and terrorists, studying crime scene reports and newspapers articles and local crimes statistics. _The family business._

It fell on Dean’s shoulders, now, to continue their father’s work. His father’s journal and his car, the black Impala ’67 they had lived in for most of their lives. That was what Dean had left of everything he and his brother had always known.

Dean grabbed his head, fingertips digging into his temples. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. He stood up and headed for the small bathroom.

Sam had left that life. Sam had gone off to college. He’d won a scholarship, he had a chance—he could make something else of himself. Dean had made him take that chance.

Sam was missing. He had dropped out after his first year, even though college had been Sam’s goal, his dream. After that, Dean hadn’t been able to get a hold of his brother.

Dean splashed his face with warm water, without waiting for it to cool down enough to be a relief. He ran his shaking fingertips through his hair, pushing back a few strands that had stuck to his forehead. Droplets trickled down his temples. Lifting his head, Dean caught his reflection in the mirror.

Green eyes met him in the glass, framed by dark violet circles that looked punched in. His hair was in need of a trim that he didn’t have time for; days old stubble shadowed his cheekbones.

He stood back, letting his gaze trace the familiar shapes of his own appearance. He leaned down and washed his hands.

The Shrike’s victims were men in Dean’s age range. Men with brown hair, who had found themselves alone.

Men who looked like him.

His fingers gripped the ceramic edge of the sink.

No. Sammy wasn’t missing.

Sam didn’t want to be found.

-

There was a triangle of pale yellow light on the portion of the sidewalk directly below the street lamp. He could stare at it, follow the glass blades growing between the cracks in the pale gray concrete.

Letting his arm hang from the open window, Sam leaned back against the headrest of his rental car. It was old and beat-up, with an unpleasant smell of ash and stale gum lingering within the cheap fabric that covered the seats. He closed his eyes. The heat that clung to his skin was damp and sticky, coating his nape, the inside of his forearms.

He opened his eyes. Almost 10 PM, according to the clock on the dashboard. He glanced at the entrance of the corner store on the opposite side of the street.

He turned on the radio and started the car, moving slowly out of the parking spot and into the empty street.

Static crackled as he fiddled with the radio, skipping fragments of country songs and noisy talk shows and commercials for toothpaste and insurance companies. He took a left turn, proceeding calmly around the block. He was about to change stations again, when his hand paused, stopped by a faded echo of warm notes that rolled like waves, and a full-bodied voice with a gentle, melancholic tang. Sam raised the volume. Wade Flemons, _“Devil In Your Soul”_.

There had been a vinyl record player, once, in the lobby of a hotel where he’d been staying. He was seven or eight, maybe, and the receptionist was an old lady with a soft voice and shiny white hair, and she’d showed him how it worked. That song was one of her favorites.

Sam let the song play, humming along. He drove slowly through the sparse traffic, until he found himself back to his starting point about five minutes later. There was a truck parked in the spot he’d been occupying, so he stopped a few feet behind. He maneuvered the car in the space between two street lights.

Excitement bubbled in his stomach. He turned toward the passenger seat, picking up the black trucker hat he’d bought a couple days before. He put it on, along with a pair of large mirror sunglasses.

He couldn’t know for sure. He could turn out to be wrong, after all. He switched off the radio and opened the road map he had stashed in the glove compartment, unfolding it over his knees.

A few moments later, he was alerted by movement in the periphery of his vision. Sam looked up, straightening in his seat.

Dean walked around the corner and appeared on the other side of the road.

It was him. It _was_ him, beautiful and sharp, and Sam’s heart leapt into his mouth and his knuckles clenched around the thin paper. The glimpses Sam had captured before, here and there, didn’t do justice to what Dean looked like now. It was as if no time had ever passed at all. And yet Dean was different, too. His movements were brisk, his strides quick and large, like he was in a hurry. There was a curve in his shoulders, in the way his neck was bowed, which hadn’t been there before. Dean’s hair was sun-golden; something cutting in his features, in the bareness of his arms revealed by the sleeves of a dark grey t-shirt. Left hand shoved inside his jeans pocket, right hand holding his phone. He was alone, like Sam had expected he would be.

Sam lowered his head. He lifted the map a little higher up, shielding his face behind its upper corner. He pressed his back harder against the seat, each heartbeat pounding under his ribcage.

Dean strode past Sam’s car, eyes on the ground, headed the opposite way. He walked past the corner store, without stopping. He had to be going to the bar, then. Probably _Lenny’s_.

Sam stalled, letting his eyes follow Dean’s steps. Euphoria shot through his veins; a wild burst of laughter built up in his throat, pressing against his lips. The day before, he hadn’t been able to get that close.

He set his trembling hands on the wheel, sagging against the seat. Pressing his luck right now would be careless. He exhaled, relaxing, pulse rumbling in his ears. Besides, this had been a detour.

He waited until Dean had disappeared in the distance before starting the car again. Next to him, the old gym bag was still in its place, lodged in the space under the passenger seat. He let his gaze glide over its familiar shape while he waited at a stop light. He sped up, leaving the town center behind.

The sky was high above and ink-black when Sam stopped again, tires coming to a screeching halt over the bumpy ground. Silence all around, and the continuous buzzing of bugs, and the sea of fields opening at either side of the empty road.

Sam unfastened his seat belt and leaned over, picking up the gym bag and resting it over his knees.

Moonlight hit his hands in an oblique blade while he opened the zipper, slowly, with delicate care. His fingertips ghosted over the cool glass of the jar peeking from inside.

He’d wanted to hold on to everything for a little while longer, but some cleaning was in order.

He opened the bag completely and took out the jar, holding it in his palm.

Behind the glass, in suspension, two white spheres glistened in the faint light. Matt Williams’ eyeballs.

Sam trailed his index over the smooth surface. The distorted shadow of his own face danced over the twin shapes of the trophies he’d preserved.

They weren’t the right color.

He slid the jar back into the bag. He stepped out of the car, into the stifling heat of the night, and went to open the trunk.

Matt Williams had loving parents and a baby sister. He had friends. They would keep on searching for him, waiting for him to come home. How long would it take before they stopped?

They would never hear Matt’s voice again.

Sam shut the trunk. The noise rippled and dissipated in the air.

Time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: body horror, including descriptions of eye gore, mouth/tongue gore, fingers gore, and torture. Possible hints of past abusive family environment.
> 
> -
> 
> Shrike!Sam is a tribute to Meg!Sam in season 2 and to how apparently many of us witnessed THAT and squirmed uncomfortably in our seats and went, "Hope this doesn't awaken anything in me".  
> This chapter is also my personal revenge for the fact that I tried to watch episode 3x08 while I was eating and it was a Mistake. 
> 
> -  
> More musical inspiration! 
> 
> "Goin' Down" and "Going to Hell" by The Pretty Reckless  
> "Heart Heart Head" - Meg Myers  
> "Killer" - "The Hoosiers"  
> "An Unhealthy Obsession" - The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra  
> "Stalker's Tango" - Authoheart  
> "Love made me do it" - Ellise  
> "Sex with a ghost" - Teddy Hyde  
> "Moon Over Bourbon Street" - Sting  
> "The horror of our love" - Ludo


	3. You better run like the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see end notes for more detailed and spoiler-y chapter warnings. ^^

It was the church bells ringing which brought back the memory. Old sensations impressed into his skin, swept his way along with a whiff of the warm scent of fresh bread from a nearby bakery.

Dean stopped in the middle of the crowded square, glancing up at the looming brick building. An iron cross on top of the triangular roof. Colored glass glittered while the repetitive sounds resonated through the air. Dean looked at his phone. Right. A Sunday.

He hadn’t been thinking about it when he’d woken up; most of the time Sundays just passed by like any other day. But now he couldn’t shake it off.

Sunday breakfast. It was a tradition he’d made up when he and Sam were kids, he didn’t even remember when. They never stayed in the same place for long; they skipped plenty of meals. But ever since he could remember, he had decided he would wake up each Sunday and make something nice for Sammy to eat.

He was no great cook, back then, eight or nine at most when he’d started. Mostly it was grilled cheese sandwiches with burned up corners on some old, heavy skillet, or pancakes made with cheap pre-packaged batter which never turned out as fluffy as the boxes promised. When money was tight, sometimes it was stale crackers split between the two of them; and he’d tell his brother the two pieces were perfectly even, and he sneaked the bigger piece into Sammy’s palm.

It was nothing great, but Sammy would come up to him and stand on his toes to peek at what Dean was doing; and when he smiled with gaps between his milk teeth, his face would light up like Dean had invented the concept of breakfast.

At times, Sunday breakfast had been candy and ice cream and popsicles that Dean swiped from gas stations and passing ice cream trucks, deft and running off as fast as he could and never getting caught, to deposit his stolen bounty onto Sammy’s bed.

The habit had stuck throughout their childhood. It didn’t matter where they were, or if they were on a job. Each Sunday, Dean would remember. If Dean ever slept in, Sam would come to shake him awake. _Dean, Dean, wake up._

Dean turned, watching the couples and families going in and out in swarms near the entrance of the bakery. The smell clung to his nose and his stomach growled, an involuntary response. Food was the only thing that could be _simple_. Always familiar, no matter where he went; the most essential truth of what kept his body going. With his newspapers tucked under his arm on a summer morning, he could almost be one of those people.

Dean ducked his head and walked away.

-

Dean shut the car door and with it, he locked out the swirls of hot, dry wind howling and sweeping the street around him. He hissed against the heat of the interior, waiting for his body to adjust as he left the hotel.

_“We think the Shrike took him, but the police won’t hear it. They don’t want a case like that on their hands”_

Mark and Alana had seemed pretty convinced. Well, they’d seemed fucking terrified, at the very least.

‘Scared’ didn’t always make for a _reliable_ witness. Far from it. But they’d been the first people he’d talked to who had even mentioned the killer openly, and unprompted. Aside from them, he’d had his share of unfriendly glares, lowered eyes, and doors shut in his face.

Dean kept driving, staring ahead at the monotonous road stretching out in front of him. Williams had vanished some time after leaving his work place; it didn’t seem like he had ever made it home. Since he’d gotten out late in the evening, there were no eye witnesses after he’d left the building.

Dean blinked in the early afternoon sunlight, pressing down on the pedal.

Williams wouldn’t just up and leave, his friends had said. It wasn’t like him. He had a pretty well-paying desk job at a law firm, he had plans for the future. Of course, that was the kind of stuff friends and family always said. It was grief speaking; the unwillingness to accept the unacceptable. That someone they loved, someone they trusted, someone they knew, could simply be—gone.

Still, there was some truth to it, too. It wasn’t that likely for people to just go and make themselves a new life. Not impossible—but in Dean’s experience, it usually wasn’t what was really going on.

Alana and Mark had been the only people close to Williams he’d been able to find, so far. No family to speak to: the kid was an orphan.

Mark had said something else, about the night he and Alana had last seen their friend. Williams had been _different_. Nervous. Their friend hadn’t been the type who scared easy. No history of mental health problems or substance abuse that might make him inclined to believe he was seeing things that weren’t there. That night, though, Williams kept watching over his shoulder.

_“We didn’t see anyone… but Matt thought he was being followed.”_

Dean took a left turn. The office where Matt Williams had worked was his first destination.

-

It was a four storey building, rectangular and grey and ugly. Rows of tinted glass windows obscured the inside. The logo of the law firm in capital silver letters decorated the top of an arc-shaped sliding door.

Dean eschewed the entrance, opting to walk around the corner to emerge into the narrow alleyway behind. He’d left the car in a parking lot, about five minutes away, to proceed on foot despite the heat. More inconspicuous that way—not a lot of people around, that time of day.

He didn’t know which floor was the one where Williams worked. There was an emergency door on the back of the building, opening onto a metal ladder. He walked up to it, hands in his pockets as he leaned closer to observe the metal steps. No visible foot imprints, but the weather had been dry. It was likely the emergency door had an active alarm system; easier to enter through the main door, maybe, blending in with the rest of the personnel. Williams had been working late into the evening. He’d have to get his hands on the official report, and find the last people Williams may have met before leaving.

Dean looked around.

The Shrike left the bodies naked, or stripped down to a t-shirt and underwear. Pieces of personal belongings had been retrieved, scattered here and there, days and weeks after—clothes and wallets and their documents. Their cell phones were always smashed or missing.

Dean looked up, to the stripe of light blue sky caught between the edges of the two buildings around him. The alleyway was quiet, the temperature marginally cooler in the shade. No cameras that he could see, which meant no security footage, either.

He squatted down, listening, smelling. Water trickling from a gutter and leaking into a dark puddle on the concrete. Graffiti sprayed on the walls. His eyes trailed up along a portion of the wall on his right. Small brown stains that could be rust, dirt—at a weird height to be blood. It was wishful thinking, for that to be the exact spot where Williams had been kidnapped. So close to where he must have felt safe, shrouded in his ordinary life where things still made sense.

Dean stood up. His knees flared up in protest, strained and locked from long hours of shitty posture, long car rides, long walks.

It was that… _nothing_ , the emptiness, the _absence_. That was the most unnerving aspect of it all.

The Shrike was prolific, but quiet. Over the last two years, he had made no contact with police or with the press. He seemed to relish the silence; whatever the reason for what he was doing, money or fame attached to a name and a face didn’t seem to be it.

Countless tips and leads and alleged sightings, and yet not even a physical description of the killer had been sketched out.

The usual hoaxes and imitators had popped up, of course, as they often did. Badly made patchworks of letters cut from newspapers which looked like cheap imitations of Jack the Ripper; phone calls full of panting and moans. Of all the material Dean had been able to access, the transcripts and audio records, nothing had convinced him he was looking at the real deal. It was a hunch he couldn’t explain.

No, the Shrike didn’t need those methods to make himself _heard_.

The massacred bodies were a scene, repeated over and over. The Shrike had left them to be found. Those men’s deaths had been agonizingly slow and horrifying, deliberately prolonged for as long as possible. They had died terrified and alone.

There was communication in a missing person’s case, too. If the other disappearances in the area were connected to the same killer—what did those mean? Why make a display out of some of the victims, but not others?

An act of—control, maybe. There would be no answers for the loved ones who kept searching for the missing men. Not for a long time, maybe not ever. The Shrike wanted to be in charge of deciding who would get closure.

Dean sped up, walking back to the Impala. Time for his second stop. 

The night before Williams disappeared, he and his friends had gone driving around in Alana’s truck. They had music and blankets and beers. They’d spent several hours near out in the fields, near an abandoned barn.

The place had already been searched, after the girl’s statement had been taken. It was private property, but it hadn’t been in use for several years; the owners had kept the plot of land but they didn’t even live in town, it seemed.

Nothing had been found. He should be so fucking lucky. But he hadn’t made it that far just to quit.

There had to be _something_. Something someone else may have missed. There had to be.

-

The warmth of the night was damp and heavy, sweet with the scent from the trees flanking the nearby streets.

George Rogan looked up. His foot caught into a crack on the sidewalk and he staggered, narrowing avoiding stumbling forward as he clung to the panic bar.

He shook his head. Wow, he was starting to feel drunker than he’d realized. Regaining his balance, he stepped away from the back door of the _Mariah’s_. That night the club was packed so full that the space outside almost seemed refreshingly cool, now, despite the heat. He inhaled, sweat on his skin. It smelled like rain.

He slipped his hand inside his pocket. His fingers closed around his pack of cigarettes. Only two left when he opened it. He pulled one out, fished into his pocket again—his lighter wasn’t there. Shit. He must’ve left it with Becca; she’d gone out for a smoke before him. She’d better return it, it was the third he’d lost that month.

He walked around the corner of the building, into the dead-end alleyway behind. There was a guy leaning against the wall, a couple of steps away. White shirt, a pair of jeans. Head tipped down as he lifted a hand and—yeah, he was smoking. George’s shoulders brushed against the humid bricks.

“Uhm. Hey, man.” George cleared his throat. “You got a lighter?”

The man looked up, blowing out smoke in a slow spiral. Orange light hit his features. “Uh, yeah. Here.” He turned around slightly, detaching himself from the wall. He rifled through his pocket and handed George a red plastic lighter, leaving it in his palm.

“Thanks.” George smiled. His back slid a little further down the brick wall.

George leaned down, fumbling with the lighter. It took him a couple of tries; his hands felt a bit less steady than usual. He’d been drinking harder than he usually did, but fuck it, he deserved it. He needed to let loose. From inside, the music continued to pump, low and repetitive, bouncing through the wall.

He handed the lighter back to its owner.

“Nice evening, huh?” George brought the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled. “Wonder if it’s gonna rain. It looked like it was gonna pour, earlier.”

“Yeah.” The stranger shrugged, gesturing with his shoulder in the general direction of the bar. “The music’s too loud for me, though. I had to take five.”

George nodded. “They have classic rock Fridays, first Friday of the month. Better than tonight’s techno crap, if you ask me.”

The other man smiled.

For a while, after, it was silence. The two of them smoked, side by side. George watched as the smoke rose in small ribbons, up toward the dark sky. There were clouds forming up ahead, rolling by slowly.

He glanced at the guy, just to pass the time. He was tall—George hadn’t noticed just how tall he was, at first. Long hair. Sharp cheekbones, like some kind of model.

“Hey.” George took another drag. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

The stranger laughed; a light, airy sound. “That obvious?” He tapped his finger on the cigarette, flicking ash on the sidewalk. “No, I’m just passing through.” He looked at George. “I’m on vacation, actually. A road trip, me and my brother.” His lips twitched, curling around the filter. “Seeing new places, beaches and pools, going to bars… That kind of stuff.”

“Must be nice,” George mused. “I have a brother, too.”

“Younger or older?”

“Younger, he’s twelve.” George rolled his eyes. “Little brat. Well, he’s fine, I guess. But you can’t really share stuff, you know. We can’t talk about anything.”

The stranger hummed. “I get that.” The cigarette now was consumed down to the tip, shining between his knuckles. “Well. Maybe it’s gonna get better when the two of you are older.”

He let the stump fall to the ground, and crushed it under the sole of his sneaker.

-

It must’ve been the rhythmic sound of the rain falling that woke him up, slipping through the cloud of thick cotton wrapped around his brain. When thunder rolled like an exploding gunshot, Dean’s eyes snapped open.

He was curled on one side. He hadn’t meant to sleep; he must’ve drifted off before he even pulled out his laptop like he’d meant to. It was dark. He was still in the same clothes he’d been wearing outside.

He rolled onto his back, rubbing his arm over his forehead. The search near the barn had been just as fruitless as Williams’ workplace.

An explosion of white light. In the distance, a few moments later, another low rumble of thunder.

Dean closed his eyes.

_“Sam, you know Dad’s not gonna let you keep it.”_

_The rain was falling so thick it was difficult to see. It was cold, early in the spring. Dean huffed, but he followed along anyway, setting his feet carefully on the slippery ground, step after step. Sam tugged at the sleeve of Dean’s jacket, impatient. They didn’t have raincoats, and they were both getting soaked._

_“Come on,” Sam insisted, in all his eight-year-old solemnity. They walked around the empty lawn outside the motel, surrounded by a flaky white fence. Behind the building the ground sloped and the grass grew tall, up to their knees, leading to the beginning of a patch of trees and thorny bushes._

_“He was here yesterday,” Sam continued. “I heard him.”_

_“We can’t keep a cat,” Dean tried, again; he had to speed up, arms swaying as small rocks tumbled down, slipping from under his feet. “Sam, wait up.” His brother was already further down, his yellow sweater the only bright spot of color in the swirl of pale green and steely grey._

_Sam stopped, abruptly, standing near a collapsed tree trunk. There was a chain link fence there, signaling the beginning of somebody’s courtyard. Sam pointed his finger. “He’s still there! Listen, Dean, he’s meowing.”_

_Dean frowned. He couldn’t hear anything, beyond the rain that kept falling and falling. But he listened, and he looked, craning his neck to see; and something like a small black spot materialized in the grass._

_“We can’t leave him here, Dean.” Sam knelt down, weeds brushing his shoulders. His hair was dark, glued to his neck, and Dean was cold, and they were not supposed to leave their room._

_Sam turned around. “He doesn’t have a mom.”_

_Dean shuffled his feet. “It’s a cat, it lives outside. I’m sure the mom will be back soon.”_

_But Sam was already turning away, moving slow and careful and offering his hand; and Dean’s ears, at last, picked up a feeble mewling noise._

_He stood up a few moments later. A tiny black kitten was scooped up in his arms, a bundle of black fur matted with mud. If Dean hadn’t known, he would’ve taken it for a garbage bag or a pile or rags. But the kitten meowed louder, and a pink mouth and blue eyes appeared, and Sam smiled, raindrops falling on his victorious face._

_“Okay.” Dean surrendered. “We can take it in. Until Dad comes back.”_

Dean looked up. Shadows danced on the white paint of the ceiling every time lightning flared through the window. The room had stayed closed for hours; he should turn on the AC.

He and Sam had kept the kitten in their motel room for two or three days, while they waited for Dad to return from one of his trips. Dean had gone on errands to get some cat food, and they’d made a makeshift bed out of one of Sam’s old shirts, and a box in the bathroom for the cat to do its business, even as Dean had grumbled that the fleabag stunk and that Sam had better not let it touch any of Dean’s stuff.

They didn’t even know anything about how to take care of a pet. That thing was scrawny and shaky, clawing and hissing at everything, dragging one of its hind legs. But Sam had done his best to take care of that cat like it mattered, wrapping it in his clothes and talking to it softly, cleaning his fur gently, feeding him from his fingers.

Sammy who was short and skinny, all sharp angles and soft hair and _too sensitive_. Sam who cried over tipped birds’ nests filled with cracked eggs and chased after lizards and bugs and strays with missing limbs, forcing Dean to run after him.

_“He’s not a sack of fur,” Sam informed Dean, arms closing protectively around the cat. It was curled up on the table, purring loudly as Sam stroked its ears. “His name is Death Star,” he corrected Dean, chin haughtily tipped up._

_“Whatever.” Dean shrugged, but he bit his tongue. He’d been asking around, looking for someone who could take the cat, somewhere they could leave it._

_He couldn’t tell his brother, after all they had done, that his stupid mangy friend was probably going to die anyway._

Dad had returned, and the day had come to leave their room.

Sam had cried, screaming himself hoarse, when Dean had forced him to leave the kitten on the side of the road. Dean had wrapped his arms around Sam’s waist, pulling and pushing and dragging him inside the car.

Sam had kicked and clawed and he’d punched Dean’s arm, over and over. His small body shaking all over with violent sobs for what had felt like hours, after Dad had slammed the car door shut behind them. Sticky trail of tears and snot on the sleeves of Dean’s hoodie as he hugged Sam, smothering tight, fingers running through sweaty hair. _Please, Sammy, stop it. Shhh. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

Dad hadn’t shouted, then. He hadn’t turned around at all, until their next destination.

Dean’s fingers clasped the sheets. A taste like bile in his mouth.

Sam had gone off to college because Dean had made him. He’d hated Dean for it, but Dean had put him on that bus, and Sam had left.

It was during Sam’s first year that the messages had started. And the calls. And the voice mails.

_Dean. It’s Sam. Please. Dean, please, pick up, I just wanna talk. Just give me five minutes._

All day, almost every day. Dozens of them, at all hours.

It was six months into Sam’s departure that Dean had been startled awake in the middle of the night by the sound of fists banging on the door of the apartment he’d recently moved into. Sam’s voice outside shouting, _I swear to God, Dean, open this fucking door._

Both of them had learned how pick locks before their ages reached double digits. But Sam hadn’t broken in, and Dean hadn't opened the door.

By the time the police had gotten there, called by the neighbors, Sam was gone.

The calls and the messages had continued, after, but they had dwindled, until eventually they’d stopped completely. 

Sam’s second year had started—without him. Everything he had in his dorm room had been packed, and he hadn’t returned after summer break. The paperwork had confirmed his dropping out. 

Dean had been keeping tabs on him, from time to time—but from that moment, Sam had _vanished_.

Dean had looked for him, town after town, while he moved from case to case. No trace of his brother.

Then, that first body had turned up. _Male, white, in his twenties, brown hair._

And month after month Dean had started holding his breath and his guts would churn, every time a new victim was discovered, as he rushed to find out if the next body would be identified as Sam Winchester.

Wrong. Each time.

He’d shown pictures of Sam to some of the people he interviewed, in the areas where the victims had been found, in the towns where the men had gone missing. But what he had were a handful of old pictures from when he and Sam were teens; he hadn’t spoken to his brother in over four years. He might look very different than how Dean remembered him.

Two or three potential sightings had come up over those two years, placing Sam close to the general areas of two of the crimes around the right times—the college student in Florida and the missing kid in Colorado.

But the witnesses were uncertain, and ultimately there was no definitive confirmation that his brother had ever been there. Even those thin threads had eventually frayed into nothing.

Sam had never contacted him again. His brother was a ghost.

He had been tracking the Shrike since the beginning, without finding him. He had tried to make sense of what the killer was doing, so he could predict his next move. So he could save at least one man.

He’d failed. He was always too late.

Dean pressed his palms against his face until red lights danced in front of his eyes. He covered his mouth until he couldn’t breathe. The corners of his eyes stung and burned.

A strangled noise climbed up his throat, like a choked out sob.

He knew. God—he knew.

He needed to stop the Shrike.

He needed to find Sam.

-

He opened his eyes—or at least he thought he did—but all he found was black.

George moved, with a sharp jerk of his shoulder—puzzlement started to dissolve, turning to creeping panic as he found that he couldn’t.

His arms were behind his back. Bound. Something digging into his wrists. Something in his mouth, cloth between his teeth, pressing his tongue down.

George struggled again, pain flaring through his shoulders. Hot air on his skin.

He was sitting on a smooth surface, wood or plastic sticking to the underside of his bare thighs. He made noise, turning his head from side to side, trying to shake off the fabric tightened around his head and over his eyes. He could breathe from his nose—a blindfold, not a hood. Fuck. _Fuck_.

George shouted through the gag.

His legs were bound. The chair under him seemed to rock under his weight, dragging against the floor with an ugly scraping sound, but he couldn’t bring it to move more than that.

“Shh.” Gentle fingers touched his head, running through his hair, from above. George stilled.

“I’m gonna take off the blindfold. The gag, too.” The voice reverberated, echoing like it was incredibly close, in a small space.

A hand ghosted over his collar bone, the unfamiliar, aseptic touch of a glove on bare skin.

“Will you stay quiet?”

The feeling that opened through him was like a dam breaking. He wanted to cry.

George nodded, silently, twice.

The gag came off, leaving spit on his chin, his mouth sandpaper-dry. Then he could see, and he blinked at the faint white light that made his eyes water. Silence. Around him, what looked like a garage, some sort of storage room—piles of cardboard boxes stacked against padded walls.

In front of him, the man from the club. He was standing there, a couple steps away. Feet wide, his arms crossed, his stance relaxed. There was another chair next to him, with an open suitcase on top of it. George couldn’t see what was inside it.

“What…” His voice crumbled in his mouth. His gaze flicked frantically from wall to wall.

He fought against the cold that was settling deep inside his guts. He tried, a little louder: “I—I have money. It’s in my wallet, you can take it. My watch, too.”

The tall man ignored him, leaning down over the suitcase.

“A-anything you want, please. You can call my parents, call my friends, they will…”

The stranger stood up. The light bounced on his face in strange patterns. It made it difficult to see his eyes.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, George,” he said, softly. “Tonight you’re out of luck.”

He came closer, walking up to George’s chair.

“I was messing with you, by the way.” The stranger tilted his head. “You can scream all you want.”

He raised his hand. The long blade of a knife caught the light, glistening against the black of his glove.

George shook his head, tugging against his restraints.

“Oh, God.” His body tensed and then sagged. “Please. No.”

The flat of the blade came to rest against George’s cheek, sliding up slowly, gently, until the tip was brushing right below his left eye. He blinked, absurdly; a reflex, like it was an eyelash. 

The man’s free hand cupped the right side of George’s face, thumbing along his temple. “No one else to hear you, here. Only me.” He flicked his wrist and the blade spun, pricking at George’s skin but not slicing. 

“You might wanna pace yourself.”

George looked up at the nameless man, and trembled with his entire body.

“Please,” he mouthed. There was no voice left in his throat. “Please, no.” 

Latex-covered fingers slid under George’s chin and dug into the sides of his jaw, tipping his head back. “Let’s take a look.”

Light poured into George’s field of vision and his head spun as his neck arched back—the circling shadows of the ceiling he couldn’t put into focus, and a trembling halo around the man’s brown hair—then the stranger removed his hand, releasing his jaw. The knife was still resting delicately along his cheek.

“Like I thought.”A small sigh— _disappointment_. “Not what I’m looking for.”

Something hardened in the man’s features. Eyes like glass. George couldn’t tell their color—dark blue or grey or brown.

“That’s okay,” the nameless man said, voice low and gentle.

The knife slipped away, lifted slowly from George’s face.

His gloved hand cradled the back of George’s head. “We’ll make it work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: allusions to poverty and food issues; somewhat inadequate pet caretaking (not deliberate animal cruelty); depiction of a crying meltdown; suggested eye gore and torture. 
> 
> -
> 
> It took me a while to realize that "You better run like the Devil" is a line from MCR's "House of Wolves". When I picked it as a title I couldn't remember why it sounded familiar.
> 
> I kept listening to "Dahmer Does Hollywood" by Amigo the Devil and "Little Sister" by Jason Webley during the making of this chapter.


	4. An eye for an eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional chapter warnings. General tags apply. 
> 
> Small continuity adjustment: I went back and changed the alias Dean uses in chapter 2, "Martin Landon", from reporter to private investigator, so that's what he's going with.

Exiting the small public library felt like crawling out of a cave. The air inside had been cool and sticky with humidity and dust; resurfacing to meet the blistering heat made him stagger.

Dean leaned against the side of the building. The stone burned under his palm and through the sleeve of his shirt; he hissed through his teeth, letting his arm fall at his side.

He’d spent the early morning at Matt Williams’ workplace, attempting to gather a more detailed reconstruction of his last movements before exiting the building on the night of his disappearance. He’d chatted up the receptionist, a kind elderly man, and a woman from the cleaning staff. Both of them had seen Williams that evening. He’d gotten there early that morning, shortly before nine, and he’d punched the clock a little after seven.

The cleaning lady had crossed paths with Williams in the corridor that evening, as he prepared to leave his office. The floor had been empty except for the two of them. Williams had passed by the reception as he left through the main entrance. Often Williams would stop by to chat, the receptionist had said; but not that night. He’d seemed to be in a hurry, wanting to go home quickly.

Williams had looked tired, the two coworkers had noted, stressed, maybe; but that was not out of the ordinary for him. He seemed to be quite the workaholic. He’d stayed out late with his friends the night before, but he’d showed up at the office early, working long hours. He was one of the few employees who were not on vacation during those hot summer weeks.

A model employee, appreciated by his superiors. Shy, quiet, he seemed to keep to himself, keeping his work and his personal life neatly separated.

Dean exhaled as he left the building behind. The receptionist was also tasked with closing the office after everyone else had gone home. The man hadn’t noticed anything unusual, and according to him, it was unlikely that someone could have gotten into the building unnoticed. The receptionist had confirmed that the back door was alarmed and was rarely used.

The Shrike must have jumped Williams after he had left the office, then. The attack must have taken place somewhere else along the young man’s route home.

Dean ran a hand through his hair, sticky with sweat. The sudden growling of his stomach felt stupidly, painfully grounding. It was almost two and he’d forgotten about eating for hours.

The rest of his day had been spent at the library, looking into local storage deposits, construction sites, farms, and abandoned locations in the area. He’d looked into registration names for landlords and tenants. The Shrike had to be using aliases—like Dean did—and if that was the case, maybe something recognizable would catch Dean’s eye.

He sat down on a bench near the church, with coffee and a sandwich. The sky was clear again, after the rain from the night before. The air had been humid early in the morning, puddles and dark staining on the sidewalks, but the heat had turned dry and suffocating again.

A pair of small children ran past him, chasing each other, laughing and squealing as one complained that the other wasn’t playing fair.

The paper bag in his hands was stained with grease that stuck to his fingertips. Dean took another bite of his sandwich.

_“Stop huffing. You’re giving me a headache.” Dean rolled his eyes, reaching to swat Sam’s shoulder lightly. He lifted his hand to ruffle his hair; Sam batted his wrist away, the force in his gesture taking Dean by surprise._

_Dean let go and sat back. The space between their beds was narrow in the small hotel room. “Come on, grumpy,” he tried again, softening his voice. “You’ve got to eat something. There’s hot dogs, they’re gonna get cold.”_

_Sam frowned and sniffled, his eyes still stubbornly glued to the book perched on his knees. “I said I’m not hungry,” he mumbled._

_Dean sighed. He pressed his palms into the mattress at his sides, where they left indents on the comforter._

_“Hey, look, I know this sucks.” Sam turned a page, ignoring him. “But it’s only for a few days.”_

_Sam’s chin snapped up. He darted a glare in Dean’s direction, pencil in his hand almost like a weapon. Almost—Sam’s field, for now, was the research part. “It’s not fair,” Sam grumbled. “We’re just locked up in here all the time.” He punctuated every word with irritable pencil strokes, underlining the book like it had personally offended him._

_“Don’t tear the pages,” Dean reminded him, an automatic habit. He leaned back, the wall cold and uncomfortable between his shoulder blades._

_“You know why, Sammy.” He paused. His eyes wandered to the door. Muffled sounds of steps and voices in the hallway, from time to time; the hotel was cheap, and it was packed. Less of a chance of attracting attention._

_Dean turned to his little brother again. “This one’s dangerous. That’s why we have to stay back.” They’d been over it already, but this time Sam wasn’t dropping it._

_Sam finally set the book down, crossing his arms. “At least Dad takes you, though.” He swung his legs, kicking his feet up in the air. Old white socks, the soles grey with dust. “I always have to stay back,” he said, a mocking impression of Dean’s words. At thirteen, Sam was thin and sharp, all bony limbs and hair that kept getting in his face, full of boiling anger. It kept surging out of him in bursts that Dean didn’t understand, sometimes over things that didn’t seem that important._

_They’d been holed up in the same room for days, limiting their time outside to strictly necessary errands—Sam wasn’t wrong about that. The silence, the proximity, the crappy food, it was all starting to get to them._

_“Well, this time I’m stuck here on babysitting duty with you,” Dean snapped, with more venom than he’d meant to. He regretted it, when Sam flinched; but his little brother’s shoulders hunched forward, and Sam’s face disappeared behind a folder._

_Dean chewed on his tongue, body tensing. “Sam, it’s not a game, okay? It’s not an adventure.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Listen, you… you’re gonna join us when you’re ready.”_

_No answer at all._

_“… Okay, then.” Dean stood up, defeated. “I’m gonna eat dinner. Let me know when you’re done being a pain in the ass.”_

_He stormed off to the table, grabbing the plate he had prepared for himself. Plopping down on the worn-out, weird-smelling couch, he turned away and fished for the remote. The crackling voices and flickering lights of the old TV filled the room._

_Dad had been working the same case almost a week, tracking down a priest in a nearby town. Leader of his parish, founder of multiple charity programs, an outstanding member of his community._

_Rumors of children disappeared under his care, bodies in basements._

_Dean looked down at his half-eaten dinner, set the plate aside on the stained cushions. It wasn’t always clean, the work they did._

_He switched channels, tired of the film he wasn’t really watching, of the overly enthusiastic slogans of late night commercials. “Hey, Sammy, wanna…”_

_He was met with silence. Dean turned, glancing behind the couch._

_His brother was asleep, curled up on the bed. The lamp on the nightstand was still on, forgotten._

_Dean stood up. He approached in slow steps, careful._

_Sam’s breathing was light and even. His left arm was bent, his hand tucked close to his chin. Under the orange light he looked pale, small, his face distended and peaceful for a few, rare hours._

_One of the tomes Sam had been reading was open facedown against his side. More books, binders, and pictures were scattered around on the mattress. Dean gathered some of them, arranging them in a small pile on the nightstand._

_Those were Sam’s job. The newspaper clippings, the textbooks on American crime. The transcripts of witnesses’ interviews, the police reports, and the pictures of crime scenes._

_An uncomfortable shiver down Dean’s spine, like a trickle of icy water. A recurring feeling, more and more frequent lately._

_He wanted to shield Sammy from those things. Spare him some of it, for a little longer. But he couldn’t._

_Dean leaned down and turned off the light._

-

“Please wait here, sir.”

“Sure.” Dean nodded, smiling amiably at the young police officer who shot him another appraising look, before turning on his heels and disappearing into a corridor on the side of the waiting room.

Dean dug his thumbs into his pockets, glancing around. The room had air conditioning and the temperature bordered on unpleasant. White neon lights on the ceiling, informative posters on the walls—health campaigns, no smoking signs. The police station was a small building, but it looked like a busy afternoon. Glancing around, about half a dozen officers were walking in and out of the room, disappearing into two separate corridors. Two more were sitting at two desks close to where he’d been left standing, making phone calls in hushed tones.

Dean squinted, walking up slowly to the cork board on one of the walls, spotting missing people posters. If the cop didn’t want to speak to him, he’d find his own way to the files on Williams. Risky but not impossible.

“No, you have to _listen_ to me!”

A startling half-scream ripped Dean’s gaze away from the posters. A woman’s voice, talking through sobs, in a sharp contrast to the officer’s low monotone who kept trying to calm her down.

“Ma’am—please, I need you to speak more clearly, I can’t…”

Dean frowned, with his back still turned away from the desks. All the background noise didn’t make it easy to decipher the conversation, but the woman’s tone was shaky and urgent; she wasn’t making an effort to be discrete. And she was upset enough to have gone to the station in person.

“It’s my son,” the woman continued. “He was out with his friends, last night. He didn’t come home. I’ve—I’ve tried to contact everyone he knows, and, and—nobody knows where he is.”

“Alright, if you could please start from the beginning, we’ll see if we can file a report…”

Dean turned around, slowly, still pretending to be mostly captivated by details of sanctions for indoors smokers, and dared a glance in the desks’ direction. The woman talking to the cop was petite, white, with light brown hair down to her shoulders. She was leaning against the edge of the desk, gripping it under her palms.

“His name is George,” she added. “George Rogan.”

“Hey, mister, uh… Landon, is it?”

Dean looked away. The redhead cop who had left him waiting was back.

“Yeah, sorry, we don’t have time for a chat right now,” the agent said, curt and distracted. “You can try and pass by another time.” He didn’t say _tomorrow_ , and the grimace on his face made it clear he was advising Dean not to.

Dean smiled again, a little too wide. “No problem. Thank you for your time, anyway.”

He threw another look at the woman. _Mrs. Rogan_. He repeated the name in his mind, committing it to memory.

He walked out of the station, back into the stifling heat. He flipped his phone open, taking a look—the display was empty, as always. He leaned against one of the ornamental trees on the sidewalk just outside the entrance.

About ten minutes later, George Rogan’s mother appeared at the top of the marble steps.

-

Another missing kid. Age twenty-two, disappeared while he was partying with friends at a local club, the _Mariah’s_ —similar to the last one of the Shrike’s official victims. That had been the night before, on Sunday.

George Rogan had gotten out for a smoke, by himself. His friends were inside, not far away; it had taken a while for the group to notice his absence. Then minutes had passed and George hadn’t come back. Time had turned into hours, and his phone seemed to be turned off, and that morning he still wasn’t home.

The police had told Mrs. Rogan she had to wait before an official report could be filed, since her son was not a minor and it was possible he might be absent out of his own volition.

Clearly, his mother didn’t believe it. And neither did Dean.

It fit the pattern. Same physical profile, disappearances under similar circumstances.

Two victims, weeks apart, in the same town. The Shrike was feeling bold.

That itch in his throat, again. He’d held out for the whole day, wasn’t _that_ a win. Now, Dean knelt down at the foot of his bed, rifling through his bag with shaky fingers. His skin felt too tight; too hard to breathe in the room that smelled pleasantly clean.

The last bottle he’d bought, half-empty. Cheap whiskey from the bottom shelf of the convenience store. He opened it and the liquor swung violently inside the glass.

He lifted the bottle to his lips.

The missing men, the grieving families; those were collateral damage. The message was _for him_.

He was certain, now. He was getting close. And so was the Shrike.

He set the bottle down, with a gentle clink against the floor. No. He needed to stay sharp, stay focused.

If the Shrike had George Rogan, it was already too late to find him alive; but he could still do something for that family. He could still prevent new victims. It was a fresh trail.

Dean lifted himself up. Outside, red-golden streaks as the sun started to set.

_One bedroom for the three of them, a tiny two-room apartment Dad had rented for a month while they pursued their latest case. The summer after Sam’s fifteenth birthday._

_The heat was unbreathable. Creaking wooden floorboards, mosquitoes buzzing in swarms around their skin day and night. A fetid smell rose from the swampy soil, a rotten taste in Dean’s mouth. Flat days full of nothingness, when they weren’t working._

_It was one of those afternoons, the sunlight so bright they sky looked almost white. He and Sam ventured into the woods around the premises, found a clearing somewhere behind the house._

_A tree trunk under him, rough bark hot through his jeans. Dean sat, drinking warm soda, flat and sickeningly sweet on his tongue. Three beer cans glimmered, lined up on top of a large, pale rock littered with spots of green mold._

_Sam stepped away from where he’d just finished laying out their targets, he threw Dean a glance._

_“Ready?”_

_“Yeah.” Dean nodded and rose, leaving the warm glass bottle on the ground to join his brother._

_Sam stood, old sneakers planted in the muddy grass. Straightened shoulders, his posture balanced to counter the recoil. His profile sharp, a concentrated frown on his face. He’d gotten tall, over the summer; side by side, now he reached up past Dean’s shoulder._

_“I could have helped,” Sam said, sudden enough to be startling. “I can handle myself.”_

_Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek. “No one’s questioning that, Sammy.”_

_Sam drew his gun. He didn’t like the childish nickname, had told Dean time and time again to stop using it, but sometimes it still slipped, spilling from Dean’s mouth when he didn’t mean to._

_“Then why do I always have to stay home?” Sam stretched out his arm, pointing the gun at their improvised targets. “I can do the job as well as you can.”_

_Dean watched. “It’s not—it’s not about that.” There was a sunburnt spot on the back of Dean’s neck; his skin itched and ached and he had to hold back from scratching it._

_The first can fell, flung back by Sam’s bullet._

_Sam turned. Facing Dean at that three-quarter angle, the sunlight turned Sam’s eyes a color between blue-grey and brown. Hazel, Dean called the color of his brother’s eyes, he thought that was the name. It was ever-changing, shifting with the light, with the weather, with every mood passing on Sam’s face._

_Sam’s shoulders were relaxed. He spoke quietly._

_“You’re his favorite.”_

_He turned to their makeshift shooting range again, positioned his arm. He was becoming a better shot than Dean had been at his age._

_The second can sprung backward with a metallic clang, dead center again._

_Sawdust in Dean’s mouth. He shifted his weight, rubbing his feet together. He searched for Sam’s gaze, but his brother wasn’t looking his way._

_“C’mon, Sammy.” Equally quiet. Weak, almost like begging, and he didn’t know why. No one else around for miles._

_“It’s not true, you know that.”_

_Sam looked at him. A long, stony stare, lips pressed into a tight line. Knuckles whitening around the gun. He lifted his arm._

_Dean’s gun was still tucked into the waistband of his jeans._

_Sam’s mouth curled in a snarl. A flash of white teeth._

_“It is true.”_

_The third can rolled off the rock, hit with delicate precision by Sam’s third bullet._

-

The wind snaking through the ear corns was a hum. It bent them softly, made them sway as they parted, scratching his arms and shoulders with every step. The night was hot and buzzing and alive, like a continuous sigh. Swirls of stars in the black sky.

It was like a song, echoes from the past that had been etched into his mind long ago. Other unforgiving summers, other _nowheres_ the same way that place, that town, was _nowhere_.

Sam looked up, to the back of the hotel. Its confines less defined, more blurred, in the dark. A quarter to three; the building was asleep, no lights at the windows on that side. Sweat rippled down his spine, his shirt stuck to his back.

He stopped, finally. About ten feet between him and the building. Almost near enough that he soon might rest his palm against the wall.

Above, a balcony with no clothes left out to dry, no personal effects. A solitary chair that must have come with the room. And a closed glass door window.

He couldn’t see inside, from there. Not yet. Hanging at his side, his messenger bag was a familiar weight, the strap digging into his shoulder.

A soft warmth lighting up in his belly. Sam welcomed it, cradled it.

Hell was a real place, on a summer like that one; a little bit closer, in that scorching heat.

He watched the silent hotel. So close, now, and it was difficult to move. Up there, somewhere behind that window, his brother slept.

Other echoes, fragments in the night that whispered, calling to him. Stained glass windows, each new town always had a church. Prayers on the dusty pages of bibles found inside drawers in every motel room.

There was a lesson he had learned, among the teachings from his childhood. One he had treasured, because he knew it to be true.

Hell _was_ real. And there were men on earth who had the Devil within.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write at least the first two chapters before I started posting, but I'm impatience personified and I have no self-control.  
> So many thanks to my lovely friends who were supportive and excited about this AU. I'm so happy to share it. Thank you for always listening to my ideas. <3 
> 
> There are two kinds of people in the morning. I'm Dean.  
> I don't know if this story would qualify as HBO Supernatural, but I hope so because I love that concept, imagining that aesthetic is so fun. 
> 
> Quick musical inspiration playlist, if anyone's curious about what goes on in my mind while I'm writing: 
> 
> "Perfect Wife" - Amigo The Devil  
> "Dahmer does Hollywood" - Amigo The Devil  
> "Lover Killer" - My Brightest Diamond  
> "I never told you what I do for a living" - My Chemical Romance  
> "Far from any road" - The Handsome Family  
> "Lately" - Lera Lynn  
> "In the woods somewhere" - Hozier  
> "Winter on the weekend" - Julia Stone  
> "Lotta True Crime" - Penelope Scott  
> "If I'm crazy" - Amigo The Devil


End file.
